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Politics
Environmental, medical, technological and economic tumults of the 21st Century profoundly changed how politics works on the planet Earth. Not all countries were equally affected. Those countries that were already richer, or that were able to isolate themselves from refugee influxes, or that were less affected by climate change, found their systems more able to cope – particularly as these often became safe havens for corporate investment and activity. Such countries, which still have vibrant economies and civilian populations, are said to be in the Green Zone. Broadly, this includes North America, Northern Europe and Australasia, along with Israel, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Brazil, Chile and Argentina. Generally, they are illiberal corpocracies, masquerading as democracies and account for 20% of the global population of 6.5 billion. In most cases, these countries are protected by a buffer of Yellow Zone countries. In these states, there is still centralized control of territories, but there is limited economic activity and virtually no civilian participation in industry. Such states are propped up by corporate and Green Zone foreign aid for the sole purpose of putting a barrier between the Green Zone and the climate refugees who have not yet given up their dreams of a less horrific existence. Generally, they are military dictatorships and account for 30% of the global population. The countries against which they are a buffer are in what is called the Red Zone. Here, all state control has collapsed. There is no economic activity beyond localized barter and subsistence survival, which is increasingly difficult in a poisoned world with a dying biosphere. There is no protection against the extremes of climate change. The only authority that exists takes the form of local warlords controlling small and constantly feuding territories. Despite this parlous state, the Red Zone accounts for fully 50% of the global population; however, this is a fall from 65% in 2050, since which time 3.4 billion people in the Red Zone have died or fled. This represents 50% of the 2050 population. Current projections are that the Red Zone will be virtually uninhabited by the mid-22nd Century. This is generally greeted with relief in the Green Zone countries, as it will mean they can roll back their funding of the Yellow Zone buffers. In the Green Zone, Nation States have had their day and exist as a shadow of their former selves – a convenient organisational unit only to the extent that they represent a useful collective meme. State tax revenues are negligible, due to the fact that multinationals offshore all of their profits to Virtual Havens within Arcadia, the limitless virtual world that forms a bright counterpart to the physical one. While in London, England is still ruled by elected officials in the Houses of Parliament, no politician has dared oppose corporate rule for decades. Most of the debate about left or right now comes down to which minimally funded social programs the corporations will tolerate existing at a given point in time. Temporary concessions, soon rescinded, are portrayed in the corporate-controlled media as great advances in popular rights. Westminster itself sits within a reinforced bubble, an airlock protecting it from the toxic smog beyond and intensely protected by legions of drone soldiers. In England, the civil service barely has any functions left. It still runs the Ministry of Justice, with a theoretically but not actually independent judiciary, the primary function of which is to fill the jails with inmates to reduce the street population. The Police, large portions of which are privatised, are almost entirely automated. The Ministry of Peace runs the Armed Services – England’s Navy, Army and Air Force – all of which are permanently deployed to protect the coast and urban borders. The Treasury tracks and dispenses public expenditure, but is primarily an arm of corporate welfare offices for Universal Basic Income, and a regulatory organ for the now-privatised Bank of England. Lastly, the Ministry of Knowledge, incorporating secret intelligence services, monitors educational curricula and edits the information available on the internet and via Arcadia to ensure its consistency with corporate preferences. Only adults of both sexes among the Captains of Industry, Employed and Dependents have the right to vote; Ineligibles and Inmates do not have voting rights, nor anyone living outside one of England’s conurbations – its eight urban areas that hold 95% of the country’s population. Conversely, corporations – always legally considered people in some legal senses – have been given voting rights weighted according to their contribution to GDP. There are no longer county or town councils, these remaining vestigial barriers to central corporate oligarchy long having vanished. There is no longer military conflict among Green Zone states, the economies of which are so interconnected and the rich of which so internationally mobile, that it would no longer serve any purpose. The only goal of the military is to keep the masses of foreign refugees from each country’s shores. For those rich enough to afford the visas, free travel is entirely possible among the countries of the Green Zone; for others, corporate sponsorship, though rare, is available to allow individuals to work in different countries.